Pristina, Serbia: UN Volunteers participation in UNMIK dates back to the beginning of the mission in June 1999 when some 200 UN Volunteers supported the mission in humanitarian work, organizing food deliveries, providing medical care and setting up temporary shelter for thousands of refugees returning to Kosovo. Read

Francis Kariuki Muigai hails from Kiambu, Central Province, in Kenya. Currently, he is employed as a United Nations Volunteer (UNV) Water Treatment Engineer with the United Nations Organization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), known as MONUC. Read

Kinshasa, DR Congo: December was a remarkable month for former combatants, their wives and children from Uganda and Rwanda residing in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). In a unique effort, 401 Ugandan and 66 Rwandan rebels were successfully reintegrated into civilian life in an extraordinary operation organized and implemented by the United Nations Organization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUC) and the UN Volunteers (UNV) programme. Read

To support the United Nations Mission in Ethiopia and Eritrea (UNMEE), the United Nations Volunteers programme (UNV) deployed an initial five UN Volunteers in May 2001. UN Volunteers' current contribution to Eritrea Currently, 10 UN Volunteers are serving outside of UNMEE. Eritrea's contribution to UN Volunteers There are nine Eritreans serving abroad as UN Volunteers. Read

Bonn, Germany: Christiana Cipollini from Italy serves as a UN Volunteer with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Cairo. All day long she listens to people tell moving stories of their experiences. Read

UN Volunteers were also involved in the promotion of human rights in collaboration with the United Nations Assistance Mission to Rwanda (UNAMIR), the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) and the World Food Programme (WFP). Read

Almaty, Kazakhstan: Mr Aoued Sebaa, an Algerian-Russian International UN Volunteer, is currently working as a Field Protection Officer for UNHCR in Kazakhstan. He first became a UN Volunteer in the late 1980s, working on the Afghan border. Read

Khartoum, Sudan: A team of lawyers mobilized by the Bonn-based United Nations Volunteers programme (UNV) in a record three-week period has taken up assignments in five Sudanese cities to help determine the refugee status of some 300,000 Eritreans currently in the country. Read

Tbilisi, Georgia: In Julia Kharashvili's résumé, one is likely to find the word "refugee" as work experience. Her refugee status itself was not so impressive; but what Julia accomplished as a refugee, then later as a UN Volunteer, was recently recognized by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). The UN agency referred to her as a "model for all actors working in all regions of the world," when acknowledging her work with displaced women and children. Read

Three weeks ago a terrorist attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon shook the world. Since then we have struggled to come to grips with images of devastation, suffering and grief which will forever be engraved on our collective memory. But there are also other images that permeate this tragedy, like a shaft of light: the sight of the volunteers who rushed to places of destruction to offer their help. Read